pale blue dot

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Astronomer, professor, science author
 Carl Edward Sagan died on this date, 
20 December 1996.

When I was a kid,
seeing Sagan on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson 
turned me on to the wonders of the cosmos:
all that is, ever was, and ever will be.

In 2007, I visited Sagan's grave on a hillside in Ithaca.

Six years before he died, 
 the Voyager 1 spacecraft
was on a journey that would take it 
out of our solar system.
At Sagan's suggestion, 
it looked back and took a photograph 
of lonely little Earth 
from 6 billion kilometers away. 
In the photograph, our home planet is so small (0.12 pixels) 
it appears as a barely detectable "pale blue dot."

Here's a remembrance.

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